# What would be the quickest way to melt Antarctica? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 2, 2011, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106 "2011-01-02T02:56:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/21 "2011-01-02T09:25:54Z")
> [@thirdname](#): > > By my calculations, it would take 3.62 trillion gallons of black paint to cover the ice of Antarctica to a depth of 1mm. We have that many gallons of crude. No problem. It would have the double benefit of being able to be lit on fire! ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/22 "2011-01-02T09:48:08Z")
> [@iamnotbatman](#): > > Also, note that when a human body is subjected to cold it can radiate over 10000kcal/day. That’s 10E7 calories per day. 7 billion people x 10E7 calories = 7x10E16 calories per day. Just saying. Are you sure there isn’t a terminology error here - kcal can sometimes mean the same as calorie, not 1000 of them. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/23 "2011-01-02T09:51:28Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I know this is a throwaway joke but it’s so confusing me. Why would Taco Bell cause gas? Would female college students be immune to the effects? because women never pass gas, and when they do they blame it on the dog. ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/24 "2011-01-02T09:53:23Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Are you sure there isn’t a terminology error here - kcal can sometimes mean the same as calorie, not 1000 of them. No error – human body uses ~2000 Calories/day = ~2000 kcal/day When shivering in the cold, this can go up past ~10000 kcal/day ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/25 "2011-01-02T10:21:37Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > it remains only to concentrate some small additional fraction of its output on the southern polar region. I would suggest a large array of fresnel lenses set in either Molnyia orbits or a single large lens stationed at the L1 libration point with a keel to keep it oriented at the Antarctic. > > Stranger So give me the energy consumption for total launches and size of the needed fresnel lenses in order to melt Antarctica in 100 years? got a feeling that would also exceed our industrial capacity by a couple of orders of magnitude. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/26 "2011-01-03T00:18:47Z")
Salt? Would that work better then nukes or a bunch of napalm or better yet some solar reflectors? ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/27 "2011-01-03T00:33:31Z")
Well, extremely conservatively you’d at least one kg of salt per cubic meter. Given that there are about 10E16 cubic meters of ice, it would require at least 10E16 kg of salt. World salt production is about 10E11 kg/year. So this method would take a minimum of 100000 years. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/28 "2011-01-03T01:31:16Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I saw a war movie once, in which one line made a strong impression on me. The object was to blow up a dam; 3 soldiers infiltrated the dam, set the charges; rejoined demolitions expert, reported that he’d miscalculated: all that TNT had only made a few tiny holes in the concrete. > > The expert laughed: “You thought a few 100 pounds of explosives would be enough to bring down that big dam? :smack: The force of the _water_ will bring the dam down!” And sure enough, the trickles of water emerging from the dam face got bigger and bigger, and soon the whole dam crumbled. (I’ve no idea if this was technically correct.) [Force 10 from Navarone](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077572/). Robert Shaw, Edward Fox, Carl Weathers. Grossly inferior to the original [Guns of Navarone](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054953/) with Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn. ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/29 "2011-01-03T01:41:25Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/30 "2011-01-03T02:09:23Z")
You don’t actually want to melt the ice in place. You want to get the glaciers to slide into the oceans where they’ll eventually melt. Use well-placed nukes to melt ice at their bases to lubricate flow. Do computer modeling to figure out the most efficient locations. Maybe pumping in sea water would help. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/31 "2011-01-03T03:20:45Z")
> [@iamnotbatman](#): > > A similar calculation using tons of coal (5\*10^9 tons per year \* 2 \*10^10 joules per ton = 10^20 joules per year) gives (10^17 kj / 333.55 kj/kg = 10^14 kg per year can be melted). Since there are 10^19 kg of ice in antarctica, using coal we can melt it in 100000 years. There is not that much oil in the Earth’s crust. > [@coremelt](#): > > So give me the energy consumption for total launches and size of the needed fresnel lenses in order to melt Antarctica in 100 years? got a feeling that would also exceed our industrial capacity by a couple of orders of magnitude. The energy requirements, or the current capability of the space launch industry? It would certainly exceed the ability of the latter, which struggles to put up a couple dozen large satellites a year worldwide. We’re probably talking on the close order of a few thousand launches of payloads with thin fresnel lenses embedded in an expanding clear BoPET film (each one expanding to an area of roughly 1 km[SUP]2[/SUP]) to increase the incident solar flux on the Antarctic by ~10%. But in terms of total energy it is negligible compared to the energy requirements to actually melt the bulk of ice; furthermore, once you have the array in place the additional flux is virtually cost-free, aside from maintenance costs. Alternatively, you could use metalized BoPET to act as a reflector, though there is a limited angle of incidence where this would be useful, so the increase in solar flux would likely be closer to an order of 1% (although this would be more effective in winter than lenses). To be practical, you’d want to set up a manufacturing facility in space to produce the lenses and associated devices (stationkeeping thrusters, control systems, et cetera) using materials mined from Near Earth Objects. It isn’t trivial, but it is a hell of a lot less energy intensive than attempting to melt ice by any conventional means. The plans to use nuclear weapons to “lubricate” the ice sheets into falling into the oceans? Not feasible. Nuclear weapons deliver a lot of heat energy to a small area in a very short period of time. You would locally vaporize a lot of ice into steam, which is very inefficient (pouring energy into two latent heat transitions) while not transmitting much heat to the surrounding ice. The magnitude of energy required to melt the ice in Antarctica is just not comprehensible in normal terms. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/32 "2011-01-03T03:39:10Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is not that much oil in the Earth’s crust. Well, granted 😛 The point, anyways, it that regardless it would not be a practical proposition. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/33 "2011-01-03T04:50:21Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > There are an estimated 6,000,000 cubic miles of ice covering Antarctica. > To change 1 cubic mile of ice at 0C to water would require 4.16 x10^15 calories (latent heat of fusion of water is 80 cal/g \* the number of grams in a cubic mile). 1 Megaton of TNT is equivalent to 9.9216 x 10^14 calories, so it would take 335.4 Megatons to melt 1 cubic mile of ice. Multiplying by 6 Million gives 2 Billion Megatons required (give or take). [This](http://ask.metafilter.com/133894/How-destructive-are-current-US-and-Russian-nuclear-arsenals-relative-to-their-maximum-levels) says that the current US nuclear arsenal is around 2300 Megatons. If we assume that Russia is about the same, and everyone else is half that, then we get a total of 5750 MT, or enough to melt .0002875% of the ice. > > So, global warming is probably faster (since an estimated 20-40 cubic miles of ice are melting every year, currently). You didn’t factor in the heat from water splitting into hydrogen/water and burning. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/34 "2011-01-03T04:52:48Z")
They could have Emmy Jo from _the New Zoo Revue_, dance around in her airplane skirt and go-go boots. That would generate a lot of heat 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/35 "2011-01-03T04:57:39Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is nothing on the scale of modern industrial energy conversion–even thermonuclear weapons–that would seriously make a dent in the Antarctic ice sheets. However, there is a gigantic fusion energy source that gives off vastly more energy than needed for this task. I am, of course, referring to the Sun, and it remains only to concentrate some small additional fraction of its output on the southern polar region. I would suggest a large array of fresnel lenses set in either Molnyia orbits or a single large lens stationed at the L1 libration point with a keel to keep it oriented at the Antarctic. > > Stranger You’re hoping there’s giant ants up there, aren’t you? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/36 "2011-01-03T05:02:09Z")
> [@](#): > > You didn’t factor in the heat from water splitting into hydrogen/water and burning. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, then burning it doesn’t produce any energy at all. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/37 "2011-01-03T08:10:27Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > > [@septimus](#): > > > > … The expert laughed: “You thought a few 100 pounds of explosives would be enough to bring down that big dam? :smack: The force of the _water_ will bring the dam down!” … > > [Force 10 from Navarone](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077572/). Robert Shaw, Edward Fox, Carl Weathers. Grossly inferior to the original [Guns of Navarone](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054953/) with Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn. Thanks, I guess that’s the movie, but I remember almost nothing of it (even that Harrison Ford starred) except that one line! 😃 My comment, of course, wasn’t really about the movie, but that the remembered line exposes the ignorance of comments in this thread. As usual, **septimus** is ignored; ignorant comments continue, with one Doper even planning to get energy by electrolysing hydrogen out of water and then burning the hydrogen. :smack: 😃 :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/38 "2011-01-03T21:01:42Z")
All you need to do is to relocate Congress to McMurdo Station. I figure a session or two should do the trick; less if there are some actual filibusters. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/39 "2011-01-03T21:09:51Z")
The _quickest_ way is probably to get the Sun to go nova. The technical difficulties are left as an exercise for the student. If there were an ounce of science in [Down to a Sunless Sea](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_a_Sunless_Sea) then an all-out nuclear war could, with suitable timing, upset the Earth’s tilt and bring the Antarctic into temperate, even equatorial, regions. More doable, but slower, and with a big _if_. ---
**Author:** ![Motorgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Motorgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motorgirl)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106/40 "2011-01-03T21:16:19Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > [Force 10 from Navarone](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077572/). Robert Shaw, Edward Fox, Carl Weathers. And Harrison Ford! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-the-quickest-way-to-melt-antarctica/566106.md?page=3)